Powder Blue Report

News, finance, politics, sports, and fun from the west coast

Friday, July 28, 2006

OMG! The Left Angeles Times Shoots And Scores

I'm wondering if everyone over at the LA Times is feeling alright. They have written one of the most important stories that I have ever read in that fishwrap. In fact John & Ken just read the whole article in its entirety during their first three segments of the show complete with piano music in the background. Here is the article in question. It's titled..."6 + 4 = 1 Tenuous Existence"

I want to go through this article piece by piece because this is very important for our stupid politicians to start understanding.

It starts out typical...

With two teenage daughters at home and triplets still in diapers, Angela Magdaleno's family overflowed from a one-bedroom apartment in South Los Angeles that they strained to afford.

We call these clown houses. Let's continue

Both Magdaleno and Anzaldo are illegal immigrants, settled for years in an immigrant enclave. Magdaleno has the same number of children as her parents, who were peasant farmers in Mexico. Like her parents, she is living in poverty and struggling to provide for her family.

My advice: birth control...try it, it works. Continuing

Neither Magdaleno nor her husband speaks English, though she has been in the United States 22 years and he 28. Even her teenage daughters speak mostly Spanish; their English vocabulary is limited.Yet all of Magdaleno's 10 children are U.S. citizens. The triplets receive subsidized school lunches. All the youngsters have had their healthcare bills covered by Medi-Cal, the state and federal healthcare program for the poor

22 years in the US and they still can't speak the language and the daughters barely speak it also. Ten children all on the welfare rolls. Let's continue

She grew up in Los Positos, in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, the eldest of 10. For girls, life consisted of hard work, little schooling, no birth control and thus, said Alejandra, raising "all the children God gives you."

I love that last line "all the children God gives you". Actually the science behind having a baby is real simple...having sex when your wife is in the fertile time of her cycle. It has nothing to do with God actually. Again my advice...birth control.

Magdaleno's existence contrasts sharply with that of her younger siblings, who followed her to Los Angeles but then left. They have settled in Lexington, Ky., had no more than two children each and built better lives than they had known before. Four bought houses. Their children speak English fluently.

Magdaleno's sisters struggle in vain to understand her. "She still thinks like people in Mexico — that's what I think," said her 38-year-old sister, Justina. "You have to think first of your living children instead of thinking of having more

Imagine that, the ones who moved to Kentucky all speak English and had only kids they could afford. They had to assimilate because no one speaks spanish back in Kentucky. Here we have spanish television, radio, newpapers, etc. Let's continue

Her sister Alejandra was the first to leave. In Los Angeles, she and her husband were barely able to make ends meet. As in Mexico, "there was little work and it's poorly paid," she said.Eight years ago, she and her family moved to Kentucky, where a friend said there was more work and were fewer Mexican immigrants bidding down the wages for unskilled jobs.Today, the Magdalenos in Lexington earn more than they did in Los Angeles, in a city where the cost of living is lower. Kentucky is now their promised land, and they talk about California the way they used to talk about Mexico. "What we weren't able to do in many years in California," Alejandra said, "we've done quickly here.

"We're in a state where there's nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It's clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico — everyone thinks like in Mexico. California's broken."

Did you hear that Sen McCain, Sen Kennedy, President Bush, and Arnold S? "California is broken!" That's coming from illegal immigrants!

Last year, however, she sent her daughter, Kelly, 17, to Kentucky for several months. Though American born and raised, Kelly hadn't been outside South Los Angeles.

In Lexington, school was hard because few people spoke Spanish, and the city "barely had one Spanish radio station," Kelly said.

Her cousins, she said in English, "use more educational words than here. My cousin is 7 years old, and he has a better reading level than me. He don't see picture books or drawings or anything like that. He just likes books with pure letters."

Girls from Mexican-immigrant families in Kentucky, she saw, were in their mid-20s and still didn't have children.

"I said, 'Damn, that's weird,' " Kelly said. "The girls right here in Los Angeles are like in Mexico. There are girls that are 14, they got kids."

The family in Kentucky "is more in the United States than" her mother, Kelly concluded. "They want a better education for the kids. With less kids there's better possibility of you having something."

I know that's pretty weird to not have kids when your fourteen huh? Imagine that, reading books with only letters. These are strange concepts I know. Let's continue

Magdaleno, meanwhile, was raising six other children and using a variety of birth control methods — the latest being the contraceptive patch.

She said she was stunned when doctors told her that she was carrying quadruplets.

"She didn't do this on purpose," said Dr. Kathryn Shaw, who delivered the couple's triplets and their quadruplets. "She was not at all elated, and not excited about the fact that they were quadruplets."

All are healthy, Shaw said, but weighed between 3 and 4 pounds at birth. They remained at White Memorial Medical Center in East Los Angeles long enough to gain weight, then came home this week

I'm sure that premie care for the babies cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, but hey she didn't do this on purpose.

In conclusion, I just want to thank the Times for using the own words of illegal aliens that "California is broken and is like Mexico now". Truer words have never been spoken. I know it must have killed them to write this story.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

I've Just About Had It With Arnold

I have been giving Arnold the benefit of the doubt during the last few months regarding his re-election. His comments yesterday after a La Mesa townhall were highly inflammatory. I am pretty much at my wits end with him. The governor called supporters of Prop 187 "intensely prejudicial" to a group of reporters after the townhall. All a lady said to him was to "stop the invasion". He's acting like he's shocked people are passionately for enforcing the law. So let me say that again....he thinks that people who support the rule of law are racists! Unless he retracts and apologizes for these comments to all the people who voted for Prop 187 and who are against illegal immigration, he will not get my support this November and a lot of people will just leave that line blank when we vote. Another option is that a lot of people might just stay home. It's your choice Arnold.

Monday, July 24, 2006

LA County Middle Class Are Disappearing

So I'm driving home from a visit to a friend in Arizona this past weekend and I heard the boys(John & Ken) talking about a recently completed study on how the middle class are becoming a rare species in LA County. Here's the LA Times article in question. The next thing they're gonna say is that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west....DUH! It's obvious that LA has been overrun by illegal aliens and that that has pushed the middle class out. We know the drill. They start moving into neighborhoods twenty to thirty to a house, they start taking blue collar jobs, neighborhoods turn into dumps, no one wants to live there anymore, etc, etc. This is not news.

I do have a novel idea though for a possible solution. (sarcasm on)Lets have the Los Angeles middle class designated as an endangered species. That way we can go before a judge and have him set aside critical habitat for their continued survival(sarcasm off). This could be fun. The historical range for this species used to be almost all of Los Angeles. We could actually start enforcing some laws currently on the books that never get enforced to help the species survive. You know, things like interior sweeps, workplace enforcement, etc. It's a man made problem, but it could also have a man made solution.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Tom Fuentes At The IRC

These are my own personal opinions. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the IRC or its members(but they should...LOL)

Tonight our Irvine Republican Council had the pleasure to host former OC GOP Party chairmen, the Honorable Tom Fuentes.

Mr. Fuentes talked to us about his lifetime of work for the Republican Party. He touched on a couple of different issues. He wanted everyone in the room to introduce themselves and give one word about what he should talk about. The issues ranged from leadership, endorsement process, The New Majority, Illegal Immigration, party philosophy, Irvine Elections, motivating voters, Arnold, and a few others. Recently he was appointed by Speaker Hastert to a commission on election integrity. He spoke of his work monitoring elections down in Nicaragua over the years. He then shifted gears and spoke about Arnold and the base of the party's lack of enthusiasm for the governor. He voted for Tom McClintock he said. He cracked back on the "tea & crumpets"(my words) element(read as the New Majority) of the party and spoke of his disdain about how groups like they, have corrupted the political process with their large campaign donations. All they want to do is write big checks and get their picture taken with the governor. He also blasted them for funding the latest registration scandal in Central OC. He says the party needs to get back to clean registrations by people talking to their neighbors instead of hired guns trying to get any warm body it can to sign. We saw what happened with that program. It gave the party a black eye. Thanks again NM. It was classic Tom Fuentes. He believes as I and most other party activists, that the volunteers of the party are the most important thing in winning campaigns. He thinks that this is going to be a bruising election and not a cake walk for Arnold like a lot of people think. As far as Irvine goes, he's disappointed that Republicans in Irvine haven't been able to get our act together and vote the Agran machine out of office. He thinks the alliance between Irvine's largest land owner(The Irvine Company)and Larry Agran is an "unholy" one. The one thing that I was disappointed to hear from him though was his support of Bush's immigration amnesty plan. He thinks we need to be inclusive of Latinos(no problem Tom, just tell them not to break our laws and to assimilate into our melting pot). I wanted to follow up with a few more questions about this issue, but I bit my tongue.

I also want to comment on who has pulled papers so far for city council and mayor. This is usually a cat & mouse type of thing and this year seems to be no different. All the players of the "unholy alliance" have pulled their papers according to the Register. That would be Larry "I am not a crook" Agran, Beth "I'm always befuddled" Krom, and Sukkee "Larry says jump and I ask how high" Kang. As far as the good side, Steven Choi has pulled papers for mayor and Christina Shea has pulled papers for mayor and city council I'm told. Former candidate Mitch Goldstone has also pulled papers for council. Mitch used to be an Agran ally, but he has seen the light and he has been ripping Larry constantly the last few years. I don't know who the third person from our preferred list of candidates is going to be(I'm out of the loop on this), but if we don't pick anyone else, I will have no problem supporting a Mitch Goldstone or a Chris Mears. As long as getting Irvine back to honest government is the focus, I really don't care if the third member of our team has an (I) or (D) by their name. I hope we can get a good strong Republican as the third, but if not then the two guys I mentioned would be fine for me.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Nogales, Mexico Overwhelmed By, Gasp...Illegal Alien Deportees

This is truly a story of man bites dog. So I'm surfing the net and open the Left Angeles Times to read this gem of a story. I guess dropping off an average of 500 deported illegal aliens a day is not very good for the crime rate in Nogales, Mexico...LOL. (sarcasm on)I know, I know, they just wanna work(sarcasm off). On one hand I want to bust out laughing and say "nanny na na na na" and on the other hand it's sad to realize that Nogales citizens in Mexico are being victimized by their own people. It's another casualty of the failed open border policy of this government. Maybe some La Raza & Mecha types can go down to Nogales and explain to the citizens how dumping off 500 criminals a day is good for their city. I'm guessing that explanation is not gonna be forthcoming.

Friday, July 14, 2006

IRC Grand Opening Of Fall Election Headquarters Office

I have to give props to our group of GOP volunteers in Irvine. We have been getting Irvine organized precinct by precinct for the last two years. We have a big base of committed volunteers and it is starting to pay dividends. We already have every precinct covered for the fall elections. So it is with great pleasure that I can announce our grand opening of our headquarters for the fall election season. Here are the details:

IRVINE HEADQUARTERS18008 Skypark Circle Suite 240Irvine, CA 92614

Contact: Kathryn Staczek, 714-497-5713

We are pleased to announce that the California GOP will be opening a volunteer Headquarters in Irvine on July 15th at 12pm. This location will be used as the center of our volunteer activities from now until the November election.

***********7/14/06 UPDATE**************

Chuck DeVore and Supervisor Bill Campbell will be there to help us unveil this new campaign office. Don't miss it.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

A Quiet Day In The Markets

NOT! Did anyone buy gold like I recommended a few days ago? I know I sound like a broken record, but I really believe it's going to $750 in the very near term and $1000 by the end of the year. It's at $675 as I type this right now for the December contract. I'm also recommending people to start getting out of the stock market. Start raising cash. This thing looks like it could last a while. We are also coming into the worst seasonal time for the stock market. They say the stock market likes to "climb a wall of worry", i.e it still goes up when there is bad news, but this is getting ridiculous. I say get out while the gettins' good. Making 4.25% in a money market right now sounds pretty appealing.

It appears that Israel is gonna open a can of whupass on the Hezbollah, Hamas, possibly Syria, and possibly Iran. This is not good for the markets obviously. I'm just glad I don't live over in that region. What a cluster f***! These people really hate each other. I'm not going to get into a blame game because both sides share some blame, but in recent days, it's obvious that Israel has been the one provoked by Hamas and now Hezbollah. They have a right to defend themselves. We are in for a wild ride in the next few weeks and months.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Irvine Political Update

Disclaimer: these are my own opinions and don't necessarily represent the views of the IRC

First, let me apologize to OC residents who have been reading a lot about our city in the news lately. It's pretty embarrassing to live under the current political leadership in my beloved city. The past few weeks and months have been particularly brutal. We've had the sister city fiasco with China/Taiwan. You had the Grand Jury Report come out and slam the way the city has been giving out no bid contracts to friends of Larry Agran & Co Inc. We've seen a hostile takeover of the Great Park Board orchestrated by Larry, Beth, & Sukkee. Oh yeah and how could I forget that ridiculous "ethics" ordinance pushed through by Larry to get back at his perennial council adversary Christina Shea. How ironic of Larry to push through an ethics ordinance. Just amazing. This is just the stuff that has happened in the past few weeks and months! Christina Shea and Steven Choi have been fighting the good fight, but they need one more vote to change the way business is currently being done.

What are we doing about all this you might ask? Well I and along with others from the Irvine Republican Council have been building a grassroots machine to get Republicans out to the polls this November for candidates that we are making sure have it as their mission to get Irvine back to the days of honest and good government. We have two council seats and the mayoral position that will need to get filled this November. Christina is running for re-election so that leaves two people that we need to step up here. These are officially "non partisan" offices that need to be filled, but that is a joke and everyone knows it. There is no such thing as a non-partisan office that I can think of. Larry, Beth, and Sukkee are liberal Democrats. You may ask who the candidates are that have declared or are running. I don't have those answers just yet. I know one thing though, despite the urging of some people, I will not be one of those candidates. I may some time in the future run for public office, but right now is not the time for me or my family. I hope people respect my decision. I know though there will be two good Irvine citizens who along with Christina, will put their names forward and be great candidates. We have a great bench here in Irvine of people who want to bring a change to the way the Great Park and other important Irvine issues are decided. I love this city. Some people on my list of good potential candidates would be Charlene Hatakeyama, David Sparks, Greg Smith, Eunice Cluck, Chris Vliss, John Duong, Adam Probolsky, and Nicolas Romero just to name a few. I have lived here my entire life. I want to see it returned to good custodians who have the residents best interests at heart, not to someone who wants to be a king. Stay tuned here for further details as they become available.

Weekend Update

I spent Saturday morning & afternoon at the Lincoln Club's Leadership Institute training over in Costa Mesa. I've been to these before and it's nice to go back every so often to hear about new technology and tactics to win elections. Matt Lewis & Erin Delullo put on some great training for candidates, potential candidates and grassroots activists. Steve Frank also made a cameo appearence and updated us on some the ways campaigns are utilizing the conservative blogosphere to get their message out and get people from around the country to make calls on behalf of candidates. It was great stuff. Erin is an expert at high dollar political fundraising. Matt is great at teaching people how to micro-target voters for a campaign. In these days of lower & lower voter turnout, elections are being decided by an ever smaller electorate. As he says, in this business "it's all about profiling and discriminating". Meaning...you want to discriminate against people like non registered voters/people that don't vote and profile people like persuadable voters with a high propensity to vote. His belief is that 3-5% of the electorate in a race controls the outcome and I would tend to believe him. It was good stuff. I was able to see some familiar faces and also get to meet some other up and coming activists and candidates from around OC and the state. I want to once again thank the Lincoln Club for this school. It is invaluable IMO. Kudos also go to Dave Sparks and Rick Wagner who organized the training.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Gold/Commodities Update

I've had a couple of requests lately to give an updated commentary about what has been happening in the commodities world and more specifically with the gold market. Keep those emails coming. Alrighty here it goes.The short answer about gold is that I think it is poised to go a lot higher in the next few months and years. Here's why. First a little about markets and the psychology behind them. Markets are all about fear and greed. When traders and investors smell blood in the water..i.e Iran's nuke situation, North Korea's sabre rattling, war in the Middle East, big inflation numbers....it's all a recipe for a great run up in the price of gold, hence the latest spike up to $740. I didn't even mention how our government is printing money like it's going out of style or our huge trade & budget deficits. It's fun to watch a market rise like gold has, especially when I have been writing about this happening for the last year. Some people actually took me up on my advice and made some nice coinage. Technically speaking, we saw gold breakout from its base of around $580/ounce and rocket to the $740/ounce area. It has since come back down and tested its breakout level of $580 and closed at $645 today basis the December futures contract. What does this mean? It means that we have just started the third Elliott Wave going higher(IMO) and look for this market to go a lot higher as I said earlier in the next few months and years.

The best way to position yourself to benefit from a continued move higher in gold is to figure out how much risk & leverage you want to use and can afford. You get the most bang for buck in the futures markets, but that vehicle also carries the biggest risk. You can buy the physical bullion or coins if you can't stomach the ups and downs of the market and don't want to worry about margin calls. You can also buy some of the good mining company stocks like Newmont, Goldcorp, and Coeur D Alene Mines. It just depends on how aggressive you want to be. I'm biased on the futures markets because I believe this market is going a lot higher and you get the huge leverage that will allow you to make a mint when this thing goes to $1000/ounce later this year or early next year. That's my latest gold commentary. I'm out

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Another Betrayal By The White House....Viva Reconquista!

You could call this the final insult, but there have been so many lately coming from the Whitehouse on the immigration issue that I am becoming more jaded every day. If I told you guys, my faithful readers, that Bill Clinton was going to a KKK convention to give a speech to them trying to include them in the Democratic Party's strategic goal of coalition building, you would probably say that it is not a very smart move of Bubba to do this. Why would he risk trying to win a few kook racist votes and end up alienating a key constituency... i.e the Black vote? Follow me here, next week the so called guru himself, Karl Rove, is going to give a speech to none other than the National Council of La Raza on the pending immigration/amnesty bill. Nice going Karl. What...was the brotherhood of MECHA booked up? Was Illegals For AZTLAN not available?

The really sad part about this is that Karl can't tie his shoes without upper level management approval. So this means Bush has personally authorized this sell out for the sake of trying to win a few marginal hispanic votes from people that, let's face it....they don't vote and a lot of them can't vote because they don't have papers. You're trying to suck up to a racist organization. This constituency really doesn't vote in numbers and you're going to end up offending people like me and many others who actually get to vote. Hello....anyone home McFly? Is this microphone on? Ahh forget about it. Check please.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Happy 4th of July

I hope everyone has great safe 4th of July today. I have a lot of good stories and memories about my past activities on the 4th of July. Since my blog is a cross between politics, sports and news....I thought I would recognize perhaps one of the best moments in sports/national pride. It was when current Dodger announcer and former player, Rick Monday saved old glory from two idiots trying to set the flag on fire during a baseball game back in April of 1976. Here is Rick's account of that day and a picture of the classic moment in time.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Jobs Americans Won't Do???

The suspects began following the woman late Tuesday night as she left Mexia, about 40 miles east of Waco...she was driving at about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday on a state highway toward her home in a Limestone County town when a car rammed her sport utility vehicle and forced her off the road...the men forced her into their car, and then drove around rural county roads while they sexually assaulted, stabbed and beat her...Officers found Martinez at his Mexia residence. Wilson said he confessed to the incident and told officers of Hernandez's involvement. U.S. Marshall's tracked Hernandez to a Waco bus station, where he was arrested Wednesday night.

Martinez was being held in the Limestone County Jail while Hernandez was to be transferred to Limestone County from McLennan County, officials said. Wilson said both men are apparently in the United States ILLEGALLY and will be held without bond on immigration charges. Hernandez is from Honduras, and Martinez is from Mexico, Wilson said.

What about all the ones coming here and commiting brutal crimes against American citizens? Yeah let's just give em amnesty, that will solve everything. I guess the open border radicals want to keep their head in the sand about this issue.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Laguna Day Labor Center Is Gonzo

Well well the Laguna Beach day labor center has been ordered to shut down because it was breaking the law. Imagine that, someone is starting to enforce our laws! The property was deeded to the state back in 1951 and can only be used for highway purposes. Kudos to my good friend Eileen Garcia who is a Laguna Beach resident. She took the time to go down to the CalTrans office to check the property records. Sure enough, the property belongs to the state. Here is the story from Register and the Times

This is also a little payback for the city in denying Jim Gilchrist and the Minutemen a chance to march in the parade a few months back.